Chandrayan-3 Moon Lander makes a successful landing on Moon.

[Brickjectivity]

What surprised me a bit is that the lander was on its own for the last 17 minutes, no instructions from ISRO. Good algorithm, all automatic. Control horizontal and vertical descent speeds, control the lean of the lander at any point, look for a suitable place to land or otherwise move side-ways. Manned base on Moon may not be much useful, otherwise US would have already done it.

An auto landing is impressive, and an automated unmanned base would be useful if it could produce fuel. Whoever does that first will have unlimited fuel to perform space operations.

 

[Heyo]

That is a big delay where action is needed in milliseconds. Chandrayan-2 lander crashed earlier.

Yes, but it's not minutes. 1.2 seconds (2.4 for the round trip) are enough to cause awkward pauses in communication, let alone reaction you want to have from a vehicle. It is like steering a big, big ship. You turn the rudder and the ship reacts half a minute later. You have to have foresight that borders on precognition.

 

[Aupmanyav]

An auto landing is impressive, and an automated unmanned base would be useful if it could produce fuel. Whoever does that first will have unlimited fuel to perform space operations.

There is no dearth of fuel on the Moon - Sunlight during Moon day and probably in areas where it does not have 14-day-day and 14-day-night. An unmanned station is sure a possibility, perhaps with occasional short visits by us. If there is Uranium or Rare Earths to be mined, it wont be a huge expense to transport it to the Earth as Moon's gravity is about six times lighter than that of Earth..

 

[Heyo]

There is no dearth of fuel on the Moon - Sunlight during Moon day and probably in areas where it does not have 14-day-day and 14-day-night. An unmanned station is sure a possibility, perhaps with occasional short visits by us. If there is Uranium or Rare Earths to be mined, it wont be a huge expense to transport it to the Earth as Moon's gravity is about six times lighter than that of Earth..

There should be some rare earths but there is lots of iron and titanium. If you can build an automatic smelter and forge, it would be ideal for building space ships and stations (or widely automatic with a small human permanent crew.)
And then there is Helium3. Earth will eventually run out of helium which we need in extreme cooling. But helium3 may also be a source for fusion reactors.

 

[Copernicus]

The delay to the moon is 1.2 seconds, maybe 2 with internal delay of the equipment and relays.

True, but I was talking about teleoperation, since you cannot give a rover voice instructions. (What I said was "When there is a delay of minutes or longer, the lander needs to be able to interact with its environment.") It isn't practical to operate one like a simple drone vehicle on the Earth, especially if communications are temporarily cut off as they were between the ground station in Russia and their lander. You've got to send programmed instructions that allow the vehicle to operate autonomously and perform a sequence of tasks without constant human monitoring. Even on Earth, teleoperation of a complex drone vehicle can require a team effort, so some autonomous behavior has to be built in to simplify the operation across such vast distances. It's easier to communicate with humans in real time on the moon, because they come equipped with very sophisticated autonomous programming in their brains as standard equipment.

 

[Heyo]

Here's what's in the future for the Moon:

 

[sayak83]

Picture of lander as taken by the rover
Smile, please! ISRO shares image of Chandrayaan-3 lander Vikram captured by Pragyan rover

 

[Aupmanyav]

News about India's moon effort 'Chandrayan'

Chandrayan made a hopping move. Rose 40 cms above the surface of moon and landed 10 cms away from its former position.
But then a dampener. Both the Lander and the Rover have been 'put to sleep'. Like that in Euthanasia? Does it mean that they will not wake up again?

About 'Gaganyan', an effort towards manned space flight (like that of Yuri Gagarin). Sometime later in 2023 or early 2024. They won't be sending a human up there in the first attempt but 'a female robot' (Aup. scratches his head, 'now what is that?). But whatever they are trying to do, my good wishes for their success.